Resident Evil 4: Alternate Reality
by 1wingangel
Summary: Ashley Graham was never kidnapped. Another young woman was instead taken to Spain and made to suffer at the hands of Los Illuminados. But this woman has one advantage - she has played Resident Evil 4. What once was only nightmare is now made real, and she must fight to survive every moment. (Rated M for language, gore and survival horror content.)
1. Chapter 1

**Resident Evil 4: Alternate Reality**

Welcome to a "reader-insert" version of Resident Evil 4! You were kidnapped instead of Ashley Graham, and you must survive the horrors of Los Illuminados! Fortunately, Leon Scott Kennedy is on the case - you just need to survive long enough for him to find you.

Rated M for language, gore, survival horror content.

 **Chapter 1: Prelude**

* * *

The sun hangs low in the sky and crisp air snaps against your skin as you step out into a cold autumn evening. Thick cloud cover swallows what little sunlight did manage to warm the downtown of a small urban sprawl housing your office building.

You pull up on the zipper of your long, insulated coat, tugging it tighter around your neck. It's overkill for a chilly autumn day, but after a long summer you have no tolerance for cold. University students breeze by, a bounce in their gait and laughter in their wake, the colors of your alma mater blazing on their sweaters and hooded jackets. They're off to coffee shops and happy hours after classes. You, a recent graduate, are off to shop for groceries after the typical nine-to-five.

The short heels on your boots click smartly as you walk towards a bus stop and you tug up your hood. The bus is packed with fellow office fodder and commuters, and you sway in the aisle clutching a flimsy overhead handle for the twenty-minute ride. You step off of the bus in front of a squat grocery store jammed awkwardly between a maze of residential properties and a struggling commercial district. The store is a dingy branch of a chain and long past its time, but it is your lifeline, never mind the occasional used needles you step over in the parking lot or the lack of fully functioning carts.

Somehow you always get a cart with a rogue spinning wheel.

You weave through the parking lot crammed from rush hour, disliking that the sun sets so early this time of year. Shadows loom large and dark in the lot's scant lighting. You hear a dull click just ahead as someone opens the door of a black SUV. As you approach the back of the SUV, something bounces against your boot- an orange rolling away from the car's owner. You can barely see the large silhouette of what must be a man on the other side of the ajar rear driver's side door, but you do hear his rumbled annoyed huff. You crouch and grab the orange and shimmy between the SUV and adjacent car. "Excuse me," you call, "you dropped this." Crisp leather and circulated air perk your senses with a delicious "new car" smell pouring from the wide open door. You can't see the man at all, you realize, as the windows are tinted to pitch black.

"Hey, thanks," grunts a voice familiar enough that surprise lances down your spine. It's deep and gruff, cutting yet expressive. So familiar, from years ago, yet you can't place it.

You hold out the orange and a chill creeps up from your toes, uninvited- but it is unsettling, the darkness at this time of evening and the heavily tinted windows, the terribly familiar voice, and now you can hear that the car is running-

The door blocking your view swings partly shut and a large hand reaches out to grab the orange you hold. Now you can see him, barely: A tall man with neatly cut blond hair wearing a boot-length black duster and gloves, and his face slashed with a long scar reaching from his left eyebrow down through his lips.

You pause in shock while he grabs the orange from your outstretched hand. He is impossibly familiar.

But perhaps not _so_ impossibly.

Because true to character, Jack Krauser plays the villain.

His hand crushes around yours and he pulls you forward, swinging his other arm up to your neck. A sharp jab, and you collapse. Your vision blurs and darkens but you feel and hear everything. The sting of the needle sliding out of your neck. A sharp yell across the parking lot as a mother chastens her child. The chill of the leather seat as your limp body slides across. A deafening thump of the door closing. The lurch of the car rolling backwards and then flying out of the parking lot. A terrible hush as you fade away from this awful impossibility into nothingness.

A loud whine pulls you back out from unconsciousness. Your senses come back to you painfully, your head aches and your limbs are lead. You swallow thickly with a sandpaper tongue. You lift your head, fighting nausea for a look around. Everything is stark white washed bright gold. You're seated upright and strapped in tight to a cushioned chair, and zipties keep your wrists jammed into your lap and bind your ankles together. A small window to your left is covered by a blind, but you see other windows, evenly spaced and round, open to a stark blue sky and golden morning sunlight.

Your heart drops; you're bound in an airplane and have traveled through the night. But to _where?_

"Huh. You're awake." That gruff voice is is just over your shoulder. You still can't believe it, even looking him in the face- Jack Krauser. Cutting blue eyes, jagged scar, sneering lips and all, looking down at you and sending chills thrilling through your body. Krauser no longer wears the concealing jacket; he is clad in familiar, even stereotypical cameo pants and a tight athletic shirt. A red beret perches at an angle atop Krauser's cold stare.

He glances up and down at you. "I guess you're thirsty."

You blink. You realize that Krauser was more or less asking a question. Your throat is painfully dry, and you slowly nod.

Krauser walks up the aisle of what you observe to be a small plane, private- and within moments returns with a paper cup filled with water. He pauses, holding it in front of you. "Try anything," he grunts, "and I knock out your teeth. You won't need them where you're going." Krauser raises the cup to your lips. The water is cool and revitalizing and gone in an instant, some of it dribbling down your chin after you'd gulped in earnest. It occurs to you too late that Krauser might have slipped another drug into the water.

He crushes the damp paper cup and tosses it onto another seat. "You're getting a bathroom break." He leans forward and unbuckles your seatbelt. "Get up." You hesitate. Krauser grabs your arm and yanks you to your feet. The zipties around your ankles cut into your skin and you lose your balance, buckling; Krauser pulls you upright and hauls you into the aisle, half-dragging you behind him as you hop and hobble to keep up.

All of this effort makes you realize how badly you do need this bathroom break.

You reach a restroom at the back of the plane, next to the flight attendants' area. It is vacant.

Krauser releases your arm and you wobble to keep your balance. "You've got two minutes."

You lick your cracked lips. "...I can't do anything with these zipties."

"The zipties stay on. Get in there or get back in your seat."

You don't have time to think, Krauser is counting the seconds and you really need to relieve yourself, so you just move. Opening the door is easy enough with your wrists bound, but you wobble with your ankles tied. You hop into the tiny bathroom and fall forward over the sink. The door slides shut behind you- Krauser's doing, you figure- and you fumble for too long against the zipties to unfasten your pants and sit down. It's a slow and terribly awkward process to pull your pants back up and get to the sink. As soon as you push a button to start the water, the door behind you slides open.

"Out." Your hands shoot for the hand sanitizer next to the faucet, and you pump a giant glob onto your palms before two large hands shove under your armpits and haul you out of the bathroom. The sanitizer oozes between your fingers as Krauser shoves one hand against your back. "Let's go. Sit down." You look up to find your seat when Krauser's hand pushes hard on your shoulder. "Just _sit_ down." You lose your balance and buckle into an adjacent row of seats. Krauser nudges your legs out of the aisle with one black boot, and then leans forward to fasten a seatbelt over your lap. He stands back, regarding you for a moment.

"You know, I expected you to be more talkative." You look up at him, at a formerly fictitious video game character. He regards you with a steely, almost curious stare. "Being a woman and all. You haven't asked any questions."

You glance out of a nearby window to your left to see an endless blanket of clouds far below. You look at Krauser. "I don't think you'd answer them."

He smirks. "Feh. You'd be right." He reaches into a pocket and produces a small plastic case. He pops it open, pulls out a syringe, reaches for your arm. You watch the needle push into your muscle. "Time to go back to sleep. When you wake up..." Krauser slowly pulls the needle out, and you look up at him as feeling leaves your limbs, "...you'll start getting some answers."

You blink as your head falls back against the seat and Krauser blurs in front of you. He pops the syringe back into the case. "I don't think you'll like them."


	2. Chapter 2 - Brimstone

**Thanks to everyone who reviewed and waited for a new chapter. Thanks most of all to everyone who came here looking for my previous RE4 story and read this reimagining. Each new chapter is for you.**

 **-1wingangel**

* * *

 **Chapter 2 - Brimstone**

You breathe deeply and wake. Your heart pounds. You take a deliberate, long breath and try to calm yourself, you try to sit up- but you can't move. You're on your back, strapped down -strapped _down?_ \- onto a cold metal surface in a dark room. Acrid dust sours the air and leather buckles squeeze tight around your ankles, arms and forehead. You struggle yet you cannot so much as turn your head.

You glance back and forth and try to process this terrible new setting. Perhaps it's a nightmare, maybe you're dreaming and you're still drugged up and sleeping through a long flight to nowhere under Krauser's vigilant watch.

" _La mujer!_ " You startle at a nearby voice- a man. A single lightbulb snaps on above you. Its glow is the only light apart from green figures on monitors in this small, strange room.

It seems your flight has long since landed, but where? _And where is Krauser, and who's here now?_

 _And what do they want from me?_

Figures loom over you all at once: Three men wearing white coats and with clammy skin and staring with eyes so red that you can see them through the shadows. You hear rapidly spoken Spanish. You see one of the figures- a thin man, wearing green scrubs beneath his jacket and a crooked badge- frown at you and frantically wave his hands.

You hear a loud beeping that seems in time with your pulse: Panicked, shrill.

The men stop moving and talking all at once. They step back from your table in an eerily obedient manner, though their eyes stay focused on you. For a moment, you hear only the machine's beeping in time with your shallow, airy breaths.

"Let me see her." A new voice speaks, but you recognize it much as you knew Jack Krauser's voice... this one is velvety and confident. Its owner moves into view, and you see first a heavy purple robe embroidered with golden thread and beset with heavy jewels. At the robe's center hovers a sinister gold insignia.

It's familiar, terribly familiar. Spiderlike yet alien.

Las Plagas.

Osmund Saddler peers at you with a sickly sweet smile. His expressive brows rise towards a receding hairline, framing blue-grey eyes. "Ah, _mi hija_... welcome." He pauses, looking over you. "You will understand everything in time, but for now we must make a better host of you." Saddler snaps his fingers, and one man steps forward holding a large syringe. "Begin the communion."

You swallow. You try to struggle, fear urges you to move as bile rises in your throat. "No," you rasp, "no more drugs, please..." You've lost control so much already. You can't stand to repeat the horrors of not knowing what will happen to you after you fall unconscious.

Saddler raises a hand in response. You'd forgotten how long his dark fingernails are, how claw-like they'd seemed in his digital incarnation. "You must relax," he purrs. Then, you feel a pinch as another needle penetrates your skin. "You are our guest," he insists. "You have nothing to fear while you are in this room." Saddler nods at another assistant. "Bring it forward."

Your breaths come slower, deeper and steadier despite your panic. Your eyelids flutter despite your urge to flee. The beeping, tinny and distant now, slows steadily and sounds muffled. "Good," Saddler murmurs. " _Muy bien_. She is ready."

You blink and try to turn your head, but the restraints hold your head firmly facing forward. You strain to look at Saddler. "Ready?" Your tongue feels heavy and your speech slurs. "Ready for...?"

Saddler smirks. "Ready to receive our power, of course," he breathes. "Our wonderful power... and, if you prove worthy of it, you will then share this power with millions and millions of others."

At last, this disturbing nightmare begins to make sense. You realize that Krauser was right- you don't like the answers you hear. You doubt you'll like the next one.

"What... about Ashley Graham?"

Saddler frowns at the question. "And who is that?"

You blurt, "The daughter of the Presi... President... of the United States." In the reality you'd come from, Ashley Graham does not exist. In this reality you've now been thrust into... could she? Perhaps Ashley Graham, known in Resident Evil 4 as the President's kidnapped daughter and a reluctant heroine, is possibly imprisoned here with you. Knowing this could give you some clue as to why you are here, how deep this fiction-turned-reality rabbithole goes. "She... is she here? Is Ashley here?" Your tongue is limp and leaden but you struggle through speech.

Osmund Saddler looks at you for a long moment. His lips pinch into a thin line. "...No. The President's daughter is too public a figure." That sinister smile returns. "You have no friends here, I am afraid."

You process this. _So Ashley Graham wasn't taken by Krauser. I was. I'm- I'm Saddler's victim. That means..._

Saddler waves one hand, and another assistant approaches with a strange device: A gun-like syringe with two chambers, one holding a violet liquid and the other...

A small, oval dark mass.

An egg?

You remember a cutscene from Resident Evil 4 wherein Leon Kennedy is injected with something similar to this. You remember what happens afterward. You remember horrors.

You try to struggle though your body feels heavy and far away from your racing mind. "...No," you gasp, "no, don't-"

"Hush, child," Saddler murmurs. "Soon you will understand. And you will never be afraid again."

 _Because I won't be able to feel fear!_ you want to scream. With widening eyes you watch the needle enter your arm. It pushes deep into your muscle, deep enough that you feel an awful pinch, and the scientist pulls a trigger on the syringe halfway back. A click, and the darker liquid shoots into your veins. The trigger pulls all the way back; another click, and the top chamber holding the egg begins to drain. All at once, the egg drops down from the chamber. You don't feel anything. But you know.

You are infected. As Saddler said, you are a _host_.

If events continue to progress akin to Resident Evil 4, then the Plaga inside you is dormant. The egg incubating in your body will soon hatch. The parasite will thrive and grow. When it grows large enough, the creature will physically attach itself to you and connect you to its hivemind, to Saddler. And then Saddler, the puppetmaster, will send you back to the United States to spread Las Plagas and place Americans under the thrall of Los Illuminados.

As for the absent Ashley Graham...

You take her place in this twisted story.

You watch the needle withdraw from your arm. Tension leaves your body in a sudden rush of cold. You see Saddler sneering down at you before all again collapses into black nothingness.


End file.
